You Make It Feel Like Christmas
by RealForUs
Summary: Written for the wonderful angel-princess-anna for the Banna Secret Santa Exchange, with much love and awe and gratitude for being such an integral part of the Banna community. Canon-compliant Christmas snapshots from Series 1 through to 6 (2 and 4 are a little angsty and I'm sorry! - I promise this fic is mostly festive fluff, I'm just a very angsty writer). Happy Christmas!
1. Chapter 1

**You Make It Feel Like Christmas**

 ** _'_** ** _I can see a better time, when all our dreams come true'_**

 _A/N: For the wonderful angel-princess-anna - I hope you like it and I hope you have the loveliest of Christmases!_

 _The canon-compliance of this first chapter hinges on the key words 'first_ _ **on-screen**_ _kiss' in the Series 1 Script Book...think of this as the first [off-screen] kiss!_

 **25** **th** **December 1914**

It was cold but he was not. He was distracted. John stared up at the piece of sky he could see from the chilly little courtyard - ink and water swirling across the darkness: a still, crisp Christmas night smudged with clouds scudding after the mottled face of the frostbitten moon. Could the young men (boys – if William got the call-up papers he so badly wanted, he would be a boy at war) in France see the same sky? Were they looking? (He used to look at the sky a lot in South Africa, marvelling at how different the cave - you could see that the world was curved when you looked long enough at the sky in the desert, the darkness seemed to arch away into the cosmos of classical mythology books – of stars looked to London's smoggy murk…yet it was the same sky, same stars, he knew…and that made his chest just a little tight, for all that he couldn't honestly have said he missed London terribly or was particularly desperate to return…).

The papers, the government, Mr Carson, all had said the war would be over by Christmas; John had never believed them. Or rather, John knew enough to silently ask which Christmas they were referring to. War was invariably longer and uglier than anticipated; so when the hall-boys (and William – William so eager to …what? To kill and/or be killed for some half-baked idea of patriotic glory and a few lines of a Jessie Pope poem? John knew what patriotic glory looked like when it was fought for with guns – huge eyes in the sunken faces of Boer women and children – knew that it smelled like burning grass) bemoaned the claims of the liars, the propagandists and the naïve optimists, John quietly assured them that he was sure they'd be wanted in this war before it was done [they missed the misery in his low voice, hearing – with smiles - only the certainty]…and wished with everything in him that he the one who was wrong; but he was already being proved right. The press' early cocky enthusiasm was waning – in France the men were cold and muddy, facing the Germans from lines of trenches that hadn't moved in weeks (and this was a new kind of war, a war John already didn't understand – and nor did Robert, for all that he liked to pretend he did) -

He sensed her presence more than he heard it…felt it skim across the back of his neck and down his spine, felt her quiet arrival lodge gently in his chest and the base of his throat. John looked away from the heavens, his eyes drawn irresistibly to Anna – her slight form, huddled against the cold (she was in uniform and nothing else, without a coat to keep out the bite of December), exerting a magnetic pull against which he was helpless.

It wasn't the winter night that stole his breath as she approached and thoughts of the sky and the war alike evaporated.

She settled herself on the crate next to him, close enough to touch if he dared – if he caved - but not close enough to allow a brush of bodies to be passed off as accidental.

"I wasn't sure you'd come out here tonight. It's so cold." He offered, to break the companionable silence, then instantly berated himself: _don't make her think you don't want her out here – well don't make her think that you do! It's not fair. What can you offer her? Nothing. What are you even hoping to achieve with this…whatever it is – you_ hoped _she'd come out tonight though…and 'it's so cold', really John? You're talking about the weather?..._

"I knew you'd be out here regardless." She smiled softly – could a smile be soft? Hers was. The way she said it, with quiet certainty (knowing that she knew him so well…), tightened something in John's chest – like a string pulling taut across his ribs. "It's a beautiful night."

"It is," he agreed. It would have been an awkward response, but with Anna nothing felt uncomfortable – silence, ungainly words, they all just felt natural.

She looked down at her lap, where she was fiddling with her fingers, and then slowly drifted them over the folds of her skirt until her hand was resting, palm up, on the crates between them. Tentatively, ignoring the cynically pragmatic voice in his head demanding to know what he thought he was doing, John reached out and placed his fingers lightly on top of hers. She looked up as she curled her hand around his, and he could see her breath crystallising into vapour that hung on the air between them, mingling with his. Her skin was icy cold against his, and this close – close enough that he could see the wisps of blonde hair that had escaped from their pins over the course of the day, framing her temples - it was obvious that she was shivering slightly.

"Anna, you must be freezing." His voice was stronger – more normal - than he had expected (it felt as though all of the breath from his lungs must be hanging mistily in front of his face, where it was still twining mesmerizingly with her dancing exhales). "Here." He made to shrug his jacket off, intending to give it to her, but a hand on his arm stopped him.

"We can share it."

John blinked, as Anna boldly placed her palms against his shirtfront. They had both shifted – though on his part the movement had been unconscious – so that their knees bumped awkwardly, but he didn't care. He could only presume that her original intention had been to get close enough to wrap the jacket around both of them, but with her face tilted upwards and breath coming as shallowly as his, that plan seemed to have been abandoned.

There were a hundred reasons – he could have written an alphabetised list of them – beginning with his age and injury, heavily featuring his criminal record, and ending with Vera's name underlined in red ink, why he absolutely should not be lowering his face down, closer to Anna's, but in that second, with the eyelids of the one reason why he definitely should fluttering closed, so that her lashes brushed her cheekbones, which were glowing with the same cold-induced pink as the tip of her nose, John couldn't bring himself to care about – or even remember – all of those reasons…all he could see was every smile, from the first apologetic-on-O'Brien's-sour-behalf one to the slightly sad tray-at-the-door through every warm glance thrown over a shoulder or across the table in the Servants' Hall when no one else was looking; all he could feel was every brush of her fingers – the warm flood of trembling energy that would spread from the spot on his skin she had touched-

Tentatively, without realising how close he was until he felt her warm breath on his face, John ghosted his lips over Anna's. She pressed forward just slightly and suddenly they were kissing. Chaste and clumsy and sweet – so beautiful it _hurt_ like a powerful ache in his chest - and more than everything he hadn't let himself imagine.

Anna tasted like tea and smelled faintly of lavender water and the festive spice with which Mrs Patmore's cooking had perfumed the whole of downstairs. Her lips were at once both soft and sure; and the feeling of drowning and melting and coming home all at once was so all-consuming that it wasn't until later, lying in bed and running one finger dazedly over his ringing lips, that John even thought to compare it to Vera…and came to the conclusion that if _that_ – what he had just shared with Anna – was kissing, he had never kissed or been kissed until then.

When the mutual need for oxygen became impossible to ignore (and was it his breathing that was ragged in his ears, or hers?), the kiss was broken; but the moment was not. As their lips separated, John made to draw away – reality and all its accompanying worries and insecurities threatening to overwhelm the dam the kiss had constructed – but Anna leaned in again, her hands still resting on his chest, and this time it was her forehead she pressed against him, resting it against his shoulder (and she had to lean up to reach even there, even with them both sitting) so that when he turned his head her silky blonde hair was tucked under his chin. Her body fit against his – or his against hers, he wasn't sure – like puzzle pieces. The rest of the jigsaw of their lives was still a mess, pieces missing, lost, misaligned, forced together in spite of not matching, but they completed each other nonetheless – ragged edges coming together perfectly.

"Happy Christmas, Mr. Bates," Anna murmured – and there was no space between them for the words to fill, so they came to settle gently against his neck.

Swallowing past the lump of emotion (and he was certain it was joy, for all that it hurt, and for all that it was a hard knot at the centre of a tangle of anxieties and problems and obstacles he couldn't quite see over – but in this moment he could see through, to her) that had taken up residence in his throat, John replied "Happy Christmas."


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: I know it's angsty - sorry! Sorry! I promise the next one's fluff._

 **25** **th** **December 1919**

It was cold and he was so cold he couldn't imagine ever being warm again. The chill of the cell (and it probably wasn't damp, it wasn't a Dickens' novel after all, but it felt damp - the clamminess of the air made it so) seemed to pervade everything, including his bones. He was shaking, and the excuse John would have given had anybody been there to tell it to, would have been that it was because of the relentless cold. Maybe it was. And maybe it was a lot of other things besides.

He couldn't imagine ever being warm again, but that didn't mean he couldn't remember the sensation. The memory of warmth – her warmth: cuddled into his chest in the courtyard; delicate, calloused hand in his – cold skin somehow still transmitting a tingle of heat along his nerves; soft, warm body pressed flush against him as the covers tangled around their legs; surprisingly heavy warmth of her hair – finally free of its pins – as he ran his hands through it; the hard panicked press of her hot lips against his even as the icy cold of metal closed around his wrists…Anna – in his thoughts where this place couldn't touch her, in his heart where she couldn't be taken from him – was his warmth, much as she was his light.

Lying in the dark, on a mattress so feebly thin he could feel the press of the cold steel frame of the bunk through it, all John could do was wrap himself in the memory of Anna. It was better than any quilt or candle could have been, but the photograph (which he had tried so hard to preserve pristinely, yet already a combination of prison and desperation had creased it) he was clutching to his chest with trembling hands was cold and dry and paper – no substitute for smooth skin – and more a stabbingly painful reminder of all he was aching and shaking with desperate longing for than a comfort. Staring with stinging eyes at the bleak grey stones of the wall (everything was grey in here – John was beginning to suspect that soon he himself would become a shade of grey), the impending trial loomed large and dark and cold and, without the heat of Anna's anger and flame of her conviction regarding the impossibility of his conviction to dispel it, John could feel it settling over him in the way freezing fog sometimes did over London, gradually but steadily – so that you didn't notice it until suddenly you realised you couldn't see your hand in front of your face and it was a struggle to draw enough breath into your lungs.

The cold weight he had come to associate with Vera was lining his stomach like lead and for all that she couldn't have been further away: her body presumably stiff and frozen now – buried in a grave he had paid for during a funeral he had not attended – in London, her soul (if she had one – he hadn't ever believed in souls really, but clearly Anna had one – not that it necessarily followed that Vera did) who knew where, at that moment, he felt the sting of her bitter, miserable, poisonous presence more keenly and acutely than what little of Anna's fire he could summon in this place…he kept reaching for it, for Anna, only to find that his fingers closed on empty air…The miles between York and Downton may as well have numbered hundreds, given how removed he felt from her, from his life.

She had held it together all day, all week, for months - however it was that she was supposed to be measuring the endless time without John. She had ploughed on with her work like nothing was wrong – taking on extra just to keep herself from having to think about anything, reinforcing seams needlessly necessarily to stop herself coming apart at her own. She had smoothed out all the inevitable creases an understaffed house party produced in the running of things and in Mr Carson's brow. She had worried about Lady Mary and how miserable Sir Richard already made her and had kept her unhelpful opinions on the matter to herself. She had curtsied and faked caring about Christmas and faked being alright and even somehow faked smiles.

She had clutched the photograph of their wedding day until her grip produced a tiny tear in one side of it. And now she had had to put it down for fear that the steady flow of her tears would ruin it; had to bury her face in her pillow in an effort to muffle the sound of her ugly gulping sobs.

She had held it together for so long, but on Christmas night – thinking about the last six Christmases; thinking about the fact that this, her first Christmas as a married woman, her first Christmas as Mrs Bates, she was crying alone in a single bed, more alone than she had been any of the previous years; thinking about John, lying in some prison cell, alone and probably cold and, for all that he'd barely stopped reassuring her (albeit perpetually tempered by a grim 'realism' that she refused to listen to) since he was arrested, definitely frightened – Anna could not hold it together any more. She could barely even hold onto her certainty that he would be acquitted, although any other outcome remained unimaginable, unthinkable.

She stared at the whitewashed wall through a blurry haze of tears and, as the heart brooch Lady Mary had given her dug sharply into the palm of her hand where she was holding it too tightly, wished - on every single faded strand of Christmas magic her sister had woven into her childhood – that this time next year would find her in John's arms, maybe even in a cottage and a bed of their own.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: No one could possibly call this smut (no really, it's not smut), but it's probably the smuttiest and fluffiest thing I've ever written (is smuffiest a word ? ;p)._

 **25** **th** **December 1921**

She might have had to wait an extra year before the wish came true, but when it did, after so many months (years) of pain and chaos and everything that could possibly go wrong going wrong and then some, lying in their bed in their bedroom in their cottage with her legs tangled in John's and his arms around her, Anna couldn't have been happier.

"Remind me again why the Christmas tree is in the bedroom?" he asked laughingly, his face buried in her hair. Rolling expertly to face him without dislodging the embrace, Anna pout-scowled at his amusement. "Because otherwise we'd hardly get to see it!" she explained with fond exasperation – having already laboured this point several times when they were struggling to get the little tree up the stairs and then again when they were adorning it with the pretty things – baubles and shiny paper and sparkly stuff – she had excitedly bought in Ripon on a half-day in early November. She knew John was fondly bemused by the extremity of her enthusiasm for all things Christmas this year, but didn't know how to explain that it was mostly relief that they finally got to have a normal one, together – and a heightened desire therefore to make their first real Christmas special – driving her madness, without dredging up the memory of the misery of last year and the year before unnecessarily. So instead she merely continued with her festive fervour.

Besides, having the Christmas tree in the bedroom did make perfect sense – that was the room in which they spent the most time by far, and they had so little time alone together at Christmas as it was (what with the inevitable house party and accompanying late nights) that it didn't make sense for that not to be the Christmassiest room (however unorthodox the arrangements consequently were).

John was smiling amusedly at her, but the glow of genuine joy she could see radiating from behind his eyes made her poke to his chest rather half-hearted. "I don't recall you complaining about the festive greenery earlier." Belying her prim tone with a mischievous smile, she tilted her head to indicate the sprig of mistletoe she had fixed to the headboard and which had sparked the events leading up to the current entanglement of their limbs.

Smile widening, John brought his head closer to hers and whispered "Perhaps you had better remind me why that's there, Mrs Bates." He placed his lips tenderly against the sensitive spot at the edge of her jaw where it met the lobe of her ear – grinning when she gasped, before trailing butterfly kisses lethargically along her cheek to the corner of her mouth, so that she squirmed slightly in delight.

Just before their lips met and she dissolved back into the blissful oblivion in which nothing existed but John, Anna thought of another Christmas kiss – the first one – and all the things that had gone unimaginably wrong, and then unbelievably right since then; and sent up a silent thanks for whatever magic had been worked to carry them out the other side of the nightmare and bring them to this perfect place of peace, and give them this joy so fierce it crackled through her bones…and wished for nothing more or less than to live in this moment forever – to never lose John again, to never lose the sheer happiness she felt right now.


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: Angst. Sorry. Vaguely hopeful ending?_

 **25** **th** **December 1923**

She had been all but silent on the walk home tonight, and his offered hand remained swinging uselessly between them all the way as Anna, twisting her own fingers compulsively and seemingly unconsciously round each other, did not make any move to take it. As soon as the door closed behind them she seemed to sag and it was only as it dissipated slightly that John became aware of just how tightly wound the tension in her muscles had been. Her shaky exhale clenched in the pit of his stomach and the cavity of his chest as she deftly undid the buttons on her coat in spite of her fumbling fingers.

He reached out automatically to help her out of it but she flinched from his touch. Hard. John's heart sank into the region of his lower back. "Anna," he began softly.

"Sorry," she muttered dully, not meeting his eyes. John swallowed down both the sigh and the now familiar prickle of threatening tears into the aching back of his throat and managed, "You don't ever have to be sorry."

It was pretty much the standard response (and Christ, how he hated that there was a normalised response to Anna's hesitancy and fear), but he could feel the extra weight and sincerity he pushed into the words tonight and knew she heard it too because she glanced up briefly, before nodding once – in acceptance if not agreement.

"I'll put the kettle on," he offered awkwardly, needing to do something – however feebly ineffectual – to help. "I could do with a cup of tea, couldn't you?"

She smiled but it looked strained, even a little forced. "That'd be nice, thank you."

He was aware of her efficiently getting teacups and sugar together on a tray behind him as he pottered about - trying to fill the kettle from a tap that had been sulking because of the cold for weeks, trying to remember where he had put the teapot that still had a handle - but she didn't speak, so he intermittently filled the quiet with a couple of little comments and anecdotes from the day, trying to balance the need to break the subtle layer of tension that had descended on them again with not wishing to force conversation on her.

It was the sound of shattering china, just as the kettle had come to the boil and begun to whistle, that broke the latest lapse into slightly uneasy silence. Turning, startled, John glanced down at the shards of crockery on the kitchen floor, before looking up to see Anna staring down – her eyes filling with tears.

"Anna!" he gasped, shocked.

"I'm sorry," she choked, "I'm sorry, I'm fine." She hastily turned away "I'll get the dustpan…clean this up…"

He stopped her with a gentle hand on her shoulder, withdrew it when she cringed away again. "Anna, stop. Just stop, it's alright." The effort it was taking to keep his voice low and soothing – rather than alarmed – was making it a little shaky. "Never mind the teacup. What's the matter, my darling?"

She looked up at him and although the tears were being held back, her eyes were brimming and the hand she brought up to brush at them was trembling just slightly. She was doing that grimly familiar thing with her mouth, where it twisted with how hard she was pressing her lips together, and something twisted simultaneously in John's chest, tugging painfully on his heart and tangling it in his ribs.

"Nothing, honestly. I'm just being silly."

"No, you're upset – that's not silly and it's not nothing." Her lip wobbled. "Come on, come and sit down – I'll finish the tea." He guided her into the nearest chair with vague motions – wanting to touch her (wanting to hold her and make this all just _stop_ just for once), but not daring after the latest flinch. Hastily pouring the contents of the whining kettle into the teapot, he brought the tea tray over to the little table and sat down opposite her, placing his hand palm up between them, so she could take it if she wanted to but wouldn't feel pressured into unwanted contact.

"Anna?" he prompted gently, after an agonising minute of watching her bite back tears, and pushed a teacup with three spoons of sugar in it closer to her.

"It really is nothing…It's just – with the house party…" Of course. She trailed off, looking away. John felt sick with himself for not realising how this must have been bothering her – it seemed obvious, now, that it would have dredged it all up again…God, the house party guests had been here for a week already, was that why she'd been so stressed and anxious recently?

"And it's just, after … everything that's happened this year, I wanted us to have Christmas – just one day, without it being shadowed…but I can't seem to-" She broke off, swallowing so hard it looked painful, and John – unable to hold back any longer – reached, slowly, so she could pull away if she wanted to, for her hand.

He took her hand in his with infinite gentleness. It was too much – the tender gesture pushed Anna over the edge as tears began to spill down her cheeks. She hadn't cried in ages – had grown so sick of crying all the time that she had resolved not to let herself anymore (these days the only time she had tears on her face was sometimes when she woke up from a dream she couldn't remember) – and now she was crying about nothing – about a teacup; but it had been such an awful, ugly year and this last week had been the worst she'd had in months. She'd thought she was past this, even hoped she was getting better…

Anna wasn't naïve enough to deceive herself that it could be like Christmas Before, but she had tentatively hoped they would get enough of a break for it to be one of her Good Days (that was how she divided and defined time now: Good Days - when _it_ was just a memory brushing across the surface of her mind, when she could laugh at work and touch John without thinking about _it_ – and Bad Days – when she woke up hours before dawn shaking and couldn't get back to sleep, when she stumbled through the day in a haze of exhaustion, memories crowding every room she entered and pressing against the inside of her skull, when the brush of John's skin against hers made her recoil)…but in fact, although there had been worse days, she hadn't had such a bad one in a while; it wasn't helped by the fact that every time she saw Lord Gillingham she couldn't help but expect to see _him…_ It had her so shakily on edge, for all that she knew rationally she was being ridiculous…and she couldn't even explain to John because he didn't know – he _didn't_ – who -

However hard she tried she just couldn't make herself alright. She had tried so so hard all day to pretend it was a normal Christmas and everything was fine, as though if she faked it well enough it would somehow make it true…but she was so tired – pressure in her temples and a dull-harsh burning ache in the back of her throat …and _sad_ ; mostly Anna just felt sad. And now she was ruining everything further for John with her stupid tears…

"I don't know what I can say to make this alright," John began, quietly, after a painfully long pause as she helplessly failed to get her breathing under control and he helplessly stroked his thumb in soothing circles over the back of her hand. "But I promise you this: the New Year is going to be so much better." There was such conviction in his voice that she looked up and met his eyes through the tears. His gaze was so intense as he looked back at her that she couldn't help but believe him, in spite of herself.

Watching with her breath caught in her chest as John brought her hand, which he was cradling, up to his lips and caressed her knuckles with them, Anna ached with exhaustion and ached with love for him for understanding - for somehow knowing what to say when she didn't even know what she needed to hear…They weren't alright, not by a long way; but they were together and they were healing and for now that was enough. There may be a hundred miles to go before anything felt right again – if it ever did – but they would walk them together and there was the promise of a New Year, one which couldn't possibly be any worse than the one they'd just survived…And they had survived.

Anna's watery smile was weak but it was genuine.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: :) :) :) XXX_

 **24** **th** **December 1924**

She was in his arms. She was in his arms. John was holding her: she could feel him, could breathe him – she could breathe again, breathing in his scent. John. John. John. He was here. He was here and so was she and they were together.

He picked her up and she laughed aloud as pure joy she couldn't have imagined two minutes ago swelled in her chest, bubbling up until she thought the force of her smile would split her face. She clung to his shoulders, partly because she was in the air and partly for fear he would disappear or she would wake up and he would slip through her fingers. She buried her face in his neck as he gently lowered her back to the ground, rising up on tiptoe to remain pressed against him, refusing to relinquish her grip on him even slightly. He had made no move to let go of her either, bringing his hand up to cup the back of her head as she burrowed into his embrace. They clung together like that for an indeterminate amount of time – it was probably only minutes, but physically shaking all over with the relief of having John back, having John safe, finally feeling safe herself, it could have been forever.

When they finally broke apart just a little, it was only so that she could run her hands over his chest, down his arms, reassuring herself that he was there, he was real; so that he could cup her face in his hands as they beamed at each other, not breaking eye contact for a second as she stretched up and he leaned down and their lips met – collided – again, in a kiss that resonated in Anna's fingertips and weakened her knees until she stumbled even closer against John and knocked them both backwards so that he was pressed against the bannister; a kiss that contained everything – every bit of emotion and yearning and fear and desperation that had been building inside her since she was led away in handcuffs _months_ ago…she hadn't touched him in months, and she ached with the relief of it now that she finally could.

Her face was wet when they finally came up for air (and still she wouldn't let go, linking her fingers tightly with his, the caress of his skin sending shivers along her nerves), tears streaming down her face with the sheer trembling happiness that was shuddering through her muscles…and there were glistening tracks on John's cheeks too.

The heel of his thumb brushed across her cheekbones, dashing the droplets away, and she almost literally melted into his touch, her eyelids fluttering shut (and then opening again to check he was there, he was real, he wasn't going anywhere) as the caress of John's skin on hers erased the bruising memory of countless uncaringly rough, terrifyingly uncontrollable, touches from prison wardens.

Staring at his face, she observed the way his pomade-free hair fell messily across his forehead, the shadows smudged under his eyes, the marks of exhaustion and stress etched into his skin, and thought how beautiful he was. Knew she still hadn't regained the alarmingly considerable weight she had lost, that she looked drawn and ill and hauntingly haunted – saw it every time she glanced in the mirror, was reminded of it as Lady Mary's worried looks became increasingly pointed recently – and realised as John gazed back at her with shining eyes that it didn't change how he looked at her at all.

Anna's head was still spinning with elated disbelief – there were a hundred questions she knew needed asking, many of which began with an incoherent _how-?_ – but right now she couldn't bring herself to care about any of the answers. All she cared about was the fact that John was here. He was here, with her, in Yorkshire – not in Ireland – and she was not in prison, and it was Christmas. Pushing away the hundreds of problems still hanging unspoken over their heads, she focused on the scene she had scarcely dared dream of each long night spent in the darkness with the frame of their wedding photo digging into her chest.

"Let's go home." And for the first time since her return, it would be home, because John would be there – John, in whose arms she finally felt safe, finally felt whole.


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: Fluff! You will need toothpaste. :)_

 **25** **th** **December 1925**

It was that space in-between the profound darkness of a December night and the crisp dawn of low sunlight, when the impending day could be felt but not yet seen. Anna was also in an in-between place – mostly in-between the first deep sleep she had had in weeks and consciousness, but also in-between the anticipation of waiting and the realisation of everything she had longed for (and tentatively dared to imagine) for nearly fourteen years. Dimly, she was aware that her back was complaining and her ankles were throbbing and if her head hadn't been so fuzzy with the muzzy remnants of her dreams it would probably have been pounding and, as was almost always the case at the moment, she was both too hot and too cold and unable to explain how that worked; but, still ensconced in a floating bubble of peace and half-asleep, none of that mattered very much. All that mattered was the enormous mountain of her swollen stomach straining her hugest nightdress, and the warm hand splayed gently across it, tracing slow circles with one finger as its owner murmured a litany of nonsensical love to Anna's bump - believing the almost-mother to still be asleep.

She kept her eyelids squeezed closed, maintaining the illusion, and basked in the moment – revelling in the low, heart-wrenchingly gentle cadence of John's voice as he talked to their baby – _their baby._ Anna's heart was wringing in her ribcage to the point where she thought it must surely burst through. The rhythm of another little heartbeat in time with her own as it pounded through her pulse never failed to send a thrill down her veins – chasing the regular beat of their miracle.

A bruising kick to the inside of her stomach startled Anna's eyes open. Blows from the inside never stopped being disconcerting; nor did they ever stopped being so impossibly exciting she could barely breathe with it. She heard John's sharp intake of breath and knew he had felt it too. Meeting his wide eyes, she laughingly whispered, "I think someone's getting impatient to come out and meet their daddy."

"Daddy can't wait to meet them, either." It was a response to her words but it wasn't really addressed to her, John spoke to the bump – to the baby ( _their baby)_ – with totally unabashed awe and adoration and Anna entertained the possibility that people could spontaneously combust from joy and elation as those emotions thrummed like electricity through her veins. A hundred hells were behind them, they had been through the unimaginable – again and again – been repeatedly brought lower than most people ever were, to get to this perfect point. There were still countless things that could go wrong, she knew that, and yet she had never ever been more certain that they wouldn't. That this time, finally, the New Year would bring a whole new life for them, a better life – the best…

"Oof!" Anna exhaled, surprised when baby kicked again. She didn't know enough to be sure whether the energetic little person inside her really was responding to their father's voice or not, but it certainly seemed that way. She placed her hand on top of John's, relishing the feeling of sharing this moment at the beginning of their little family. "It can't possibly be much longer now." (She was going to explode – emotionally and physically [she was enormous] - if this tiny excitable human didn't come out soon).

He looked up at her, his smile radiant, tears welling in the creases at the corners of his eyes where they had crinkled in happiness. Kissing their clasped hands he told her, in a voice so hushed and reverent the scene felt holy "I never in my whole life thought I could be as happy as I am at this moment."

God knows she had never thought they could be this happy either. They'd been given reason enough to doubt it, doubt the possibility of this kind of – she didn't have the vocabulary for this coming together of all of her wishes and dreams in one frozen moment in time, with a promise for the future to give it incalculably precious weight – since she first spoke those words…and now she was just so happy.

Beaming, she replied, "Happy Christmas, John."


End file.
